Origin of Cultivated Plants. Alphonse de Candolle

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СКАЧАТЬ all maniocs, contain something harmful, which is observed even in the products of distillation, and which varies with several causes; but only matter foreign to the fecula should be mistrusted.

      The doubts about the number of species into which the cultivated manihots should be divided are no source of difficulty regarding the question of geographic origin. On the contrary, we shall see that they are an important means of proving an American origin.

      The Abbé Raynal had formerly spread the erroneous opinion that the manioc was imported into America from Africa. Robert Brown184 denied this in 1818, but without giving reasons in support of his opinion; and Humboldt,185 Moreau de Jonnes,186 and Saint Hilaire187 insisted upon its American origin. It can hardly be doubted for the following reasons: —

      1. Maniocs were cultivated by the natives of Brazil, Guiana, and the warm region of Mexico before the arrival of the Europeans, as all early travellers testify. In the West Indies this cultivation was, according to Acosta,188 common enough in the sixteenth century to inspire the belief that it was also there of a certain antiquity.

      2. It is less widely diffused in Africa, especially in regions at a distance from the west coast. It is known that manioc was introduced into the Isle of Bourbon by the Governour Labourdonnais.189 In Asiatic countries, where a plant so easy to cultivate would probably have spread had it been long known on the African continent, it is mentioned here and there as an object of curiosity of foreign origin.190

      3. The natives of America had several ancient names for the varieties of manioc, especially in Brazil,191 which does not appear to have been the case in Africa, even on the coast of Guinea.192

      4. The varieties cultivated in Brazil, in Guiana, and in the West Indies are very numerous, whence we may presume a very ancient cultivation. This is not the case in Africa.

      5. The forty-two known species of the genus Manihot, without counting M. utilissima, are all wild in America; most of them in Brazil, some in Guiana, Peru, and Mexico; not one in the old world.193 It is very unlikely that a single species, and that the cultivated one, was a native both of the old and of the new world, and all the more so since in the family Euphorbiaceæ the area of the woody species is usually restricted, and since phanerogamous plants are very rarely common to Africa and America.

      The American origin of the manioc being thus established, it may be asked how the species has been introduced into Guinea and Congo. It was probably the result of the frequent communications established in the sixteenth century by Portuguese merchants and slave-traders.

      The Manihot utilissima and the allied species or variety called aipi, which is also cultivated, have not been found in an undoubtedly wild state. Humboldt and Bonpland, indeed, found upon the banks of the Magdalena a plant of Manihot utilissima which they called almost wild,194 but Dr. Sagot assures me that it has not been found in Guiana, and that botanists who have explored the hot region in Brazil have not been more fortunate. We gather as much from the expressions of Pohl, who has carefully studied these plants, and who was acquainted with the collections of Martius, and had no doubt of their American origin. If he had observed a wild variety identical with those which are cultivated, he would not have suggested the hypothesis that the manioc is obtained from his Manihot pusilla195 of the province of Goyaz, a plant of small size, and considered as a true species or as a variety of Manihot palmata.196 Martius declared in 1867, that is after having received a quantity of information of a later date than his journey, that the plant was not known in a wild state.197 An early traveller, usually accurate, Piso,198 speaks of a wild mandihoca, of which the Tapuyeris, the natives of the coast to the north of Rio Janeiro, ate the roots. “It is,” he says, “very like the cultivated plant;” but the illustration he gives of it appears unsatisfactory to authors who have studied the maniocs. Pohl attributes it to his M. aipi, and Dr. Müller passes it over in silence. For my part, I am disposed to believe what Piso says, and his figure does not seem to me entirely unsatisfactory. It is better than that by Vellozo, of a wild manioc which is doubtfully attributed to M. aipi.199 If we do not accept the origin in eastern tropical Brazil, we must have recourse to two hypotheses: either the cultivated maniocs are obtained from one of the wild species modified by cultivation, or they are varieties which exist only by the agency of man after the disappearance of their fellows from modern wild vegetation.

      Garlic—Allium sativum, Linnæus.

      Linnæus, in his Species Plantarum, indicates Sicily as the home of the common garlic; but in his Hortus Cliffortianus, where he is usually more accurate, he does not give its origin. The fact is that, according to all the most recent and complete floras of Sicily, Italy, Greece, France, Spain, and Algeria, garlic is not considered to be indigenous, although specimens have been gathered here and there which had more or less the appearance of being so. A plant so constantly cultivated and so easily propagated may spread from gardens and persist for a considerable time without being wild by nature. I do not know on what authority Kunth200 mentions that the species is found in Egypt. According to authors who are more accurate201 in their accounts of the plants of that country, it is only found there under cultivation. Boissier, whose herbarium is so rich in Eastern plants, possesses no wild specimens of it. The only country where garlic has been found in a wild state, with the certainty of its really being so, is the desert of the Kirghis of Sungari; bulbs were brought thence and cultivated at Dorpat,202 and specimens were afterwards seen by Regel.203 The latter author also says that he saw a specimen which Wallich had gathered as wild in British India; but Baker,204 who had access to the rich herbarium at Kew, does not speak of it in his review of the “Alliums of India, China, and Japan.”

      Let us see whether historical and philological records confirm the fact of an origin in the south-west of Siberia alone.

      Garlic has been long cultivated in China under the name of suan. It is written in Chinese by a single sign, which usually indicates a long known and even a wild species.205 The floras of Japan206 do not mention it, whence I gather that the species was not wild in Eastern Siberia and Dahuria, but that the Mongols brought it into China.

      According to Herodotus, the ancient Egyptians made great use of it. Archæologists have not found the proof of this in the monuments, but this may be because the plant was considered unclean by the priests.207

      There is a Sanskrit name, mahoushouda,208 become loshoun in Bengali, and to which appears to be related the Hebrew name schoum or schumin,209 which has produced the Arab thoum or toum. The Basque name baratchouria is thought by de Charencey210 СКАЧАТЬ